Governance and Revision

Revision process

Whenever standards are revised there needs to be a governance process.

This is likely to make use of an issue tracker and a changelog.

Worked example: OCDS

The governance process for the Open Contracting Data Standard is set out in the diagram below.

http://standard.open-contracting.org/latest/en/_images/upgrade_process_feb_2016.pngGovernance process

As the OCDS ChangeLog illustrates, each change has a related GitHub issue where changes are discussed.

During the revision process, discussions took place in a range of fora, including through the mailing list, at face-to-face events, or through webinars. However, substantive points should always be written up as part of the GitHub issues to ensure changes are documented and justified.

A peer-review stage in OCDS revision provided an opportunity for formal feedback on changes, and was facilitated through the creation of a spreadsheet template that experts could work through.

Conformance and deprecation policies

A standard needs policies on:

  • Conformance
  • Deprecation

For example, see the OCDS conformance and deprecation policies